Lewis’s Law

Brad: Have you watched this video on feminism and video games? It’s like 25 minutes long.
Me: No. Man, I don’t even know if I can do it. The sexism in video games is so rampant it’s too exhausting. Do you have it pulled up?
Brad: Yeah.
Me: How many times is she called a c**t in the comments? Are there any rape threats yet?
Brad: Comments are disabled.
Me: Yeah, of course they are. What’s her name?
Brad: Her user name is FeministFrequency.
Me: OK, so she published a feminist thing about gaming that’s getting attention. I’m Googling FeministFrequency and “rape threat.”… Bingo. Top result.

If you go to Feminist Frequency’s Twitter account @femfreq, you’ll see that things have escalated recently, someone threatened her life quite graphically and published her address. So that’s a delight.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, August 28th, 2014 at 6:21 pm and is filed under Social Good, Thinking .
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7 Responses to “Lewis’s Law”

Leslie Says:

I’ve been watching her videos on tropes recently, research for my artwork. She’s so smart. The world needs more people like her.

kristina Says:

I am so tired of that stuff, and if you’re online at all you can’t escape it, and women’s EVERYTHING not being taken seriously, or laughed off, or turned back around to victim-blaming. I would like to fast forward to past the revolution to where guys like that are automatically zapped into hell or whatever punishment we come up with.

Lisa Says:

This is only an example of a tiny part of a bigger societal problem. Feminism and racism have separated and caused more problems and hate than unification of people. Prevalent issues of women and men equality got twisted by intellectuals as sameness and the trajectory then lost focus of perspective. If we in the US are equal, than what does that mean and how does that affect the freedom we have? Equality is the union to seek commonality of goals and vision to establish a better world for all.
Women have always been objectified. Only as a man takes a wife is he subjected to see women as an equal and wanting to protect her will be able to realize the cruelty and animalistic male tendencies that prevail in these video games.

This makes me feel so depressed and enraged. I want that guy from that old show The Equalizer to come back and hunt down all these horrible rape-threatening amoebas and…I don’t know. Rocket them into oblivion but only after scaring the shit out of them. And how horrifying is it that these kinds of threats transform me into my own kind of eye-for-an-eye amoeba? I hate that part, too. Arghhh.

Michelle Says:

This is so prevalent, and it so bums me out. And also makes me feel thankful that I dropped out of journalism before journalists were expected to put themselves out there and become public brands. When I was a byline I got plenty of comments insulting my intelligence and judgement, but being called a “fat bird” was probably the most personal it got.

This is so disturbing. I had not heard of Anita’s work, and having just watched her Part I video, realize what a bubble I live in. Neither I nor anyone in my life plays video games, and I had no idea it was so bad. What she is saying seems so basic and important, and I am appalled that she has to deal with this kind of persecution. She shines a light on some pretty dark stuff, which for all its prevalence, nobody really talks about. I think she raises valid questions we are going to have to deal with as a society. Have we established equal rights only to fill our lives and minds with this insidious hate-based “entertainment”? I am reminded of this talk, by a man, about porn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRJ_QfP2mhU and how surprised I was by the comments, some of them scathing, obviously threatened. Mind you, I didn’t see any threats, slandor or objectification of him for challenging another massively popular use of media (porn) and reminding us that we become what we fill our minds with. It is that simple. Thank you, Mighty Girl, and everyone everywhere committed to putting honest and positive voices out there, sharing their humanity and realness, at risk of exposing themselves personally.